Ideological Carrier

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Series of staged photographs, July 1991

The project for the magazine «Flash Art» №166, 1992

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We made 5 photos (numbers were set arbitrarily), on which different parts of the body were painted black and red. Sign “Victory” on the “Ideological carrier №11” was painted in the colors of the anarchist flag. Since this project my interest in signs-images-gestures began. Hereafter, different signs-figures, that are made by fingers (index finger, fig and so on), two hands (eg: the handshake) became the main objects of interest. In a sense, these signs-figures can be called elementary sculptures that mankind has invented and uses them daily in everyday life. Their historical origins go to cabbala, freemasonry, and various pre-Christian cults and such cults as Pythagoreans and Gnostics. I am attracted to this aesthetic because of its supreme pithiness, simplicity and solidity. My approach was in subversion similar “original” signs. For example, instead of a handshake – handcompression, when the left hand overlaps the right and compresses it. Or unrealized witty project – to photograph an indication of a man, who doesn’t have the index finger.

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Moreover, my recent works in 2010 – series “Rot Front. Scraps”, representing casts of emptiness inside a fist, also refers to this topic.

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